WORLD SERIES

WORLD SERIES; Surprise: Poll Finds Bandwagon Jumping

By ROBERT McG. THOMAS Jr.

Published: October 16, 1993

Call them fickle if you must, but a recent New York Times/WCBS-TV News poll provides evidence that when it comes to baseball, New York City residents are front-runners, or at least runners-up runners.

A telephone survey of 1,223 New Yorkers 18 and over conducted from Sept. 29-Oct. 3 -- just as the Yankees were ending their season in second place in the American League East and the Mets were winding up last in the National League East -- found that 27 percent of the respondents said they were Yankee fans, and 21 percent describe themselves as Mets fans.

Three years earlier, when the teams' roles were reversed, so were New Yorkers' allegiances. In June 1990, while the Yankees were in the midst of a seventh-place season and the Mets were on their way to a second-place finish, a similar poll found that Mets fans outnumbered Yankee fans by 3 to 1, with 41 percent proclaiming themselves Mets fans and 14 percent as Yankee fans.

In both surveys, 6 percent of the respondents volunteered that they were fans of both teams and 2 percent had no answer.

During the three years in which the Mets were losing half their local support and the number of Yankee fans was doubling, another trend seems to have been at work. According to a comparison of the two polls, the two teams' combined total of fans in the city dropped 12 percent, from 61 percent to 54 percent. Those who described themselves as fans of neither team rose from 37 percent in 1990 to 44 percent (a 19 percent increase) in the most recent poll.

Even though George Steinbrenner has been threatening to move the Yankees to the New Jersey Meadowlands, New Yorkers might not follow him there.

In the New York City poll, only 7 percent of the respondents and 13 percent of the Yankee fans said they would be more likely to attend a game in New Jersey, while 35 percent of the total respondents and 57 percent of the Yankee fans said they would be less likely to make the trek to New Jersey than to Yankee Stadium.

More than half the respondents (56 percent) but less than a third of the Yankee fans (29 percent) said a move would make no difference in their likelihood of attending a game.

As might be expected, a separate New York Times/WCBS-TV News Poll of 1,010 adult New Jersey residents conducted by telephone from Sept. 20-26 produced an opposite pattern, with 36 percent of the respondents saying they would be more likely to attend a Yankee game in New Jersey than at Yankee Stadium and 5 percent saying they would be less likely.

Both telephone polls had a statistical margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. An Emphatic 'No'

The New Jersey respondents were not asked whether they were Yankee fans, so there is no way to gauge how their answers might translate into actual attendance at a new stadium in New Jersey.

The poll did, however, give one indication of their feelings about luring the Yankees across the Hudson.

Asked whether they would favor or oppose spending $250 million -- the estimated cost of building a baseball stadium at the Meadowlands -- to get the Yankees to move to New Jersey, only 23 percent said they would favor such an expenditure while 66 percent said they would be opposed.